In a context of uncertainty and flux, it helps to start from the specific. My starting point is the rise of Syriza, the radical left coalition rooted in the movements resisting austerity that has become the main opposition party in the Greek parliament. Syriza’s ability to give a focused political voice to the anger and despair of millions has made a breakthrough from which we can learn.

This is a matter not only of its soaring electoral support, which rose from 4 per cent of the national vote in 2009 to 27 per cent in June 2012 on the basis of a refusal of the policies imposed by the IMF, the European Commission (EC) and the European Central Bank (ECB), but also of the fact that this electoral mandate is reinforced by organized movements and networks of solidarity that Syriza has been part of building.

This is not to imply that Syriza’s success is stable or that its momentum will necessarily be maintained. One of its 71 MPs, the ex-Pasok member and trade union leader, Dimtris Tsoukalas, warns that ‘votes can be like sand’. [1] Threatening winds will blow persistently from a hostile media determined to exploit any sign of division; from national and European elites creating an atmosphere of fear towards the left and from an aggressive fascist party exploiting xenophobic tendencies in Greek society with some success, having won 7 per cent in the polls.

Syriza does not provide a template to apply elsewhere; it is a new kind of political organization in the making. Reflection on its rise, however, which has taken place alongside the collapse of support for Pasok (from around 40 per cent of the vote in 2009 to no more than 13 per cent in 2012), throws the present quandary of the left, especially in Europe, into relief. Such reflection also stimulates fresh thoughts on forms of political organization that could help us find ways out. Continue lendo →

Over the past few months, three Left political parties have been holding meetings to discuss the possibility of a merger and creation of a new progressive force in Pakistani politics. Many of us have been striving for left unity for years, even decades.

The challenges that working people and progressive political forces face both within this country and in the form of imperialist intrigue cannot be meaningfully confronted without such unity. In the past, efforts to bring the left together have both succeeded and failed, and it is in the spirit of learning from such experiences that this present attempt is being made. Continue lendo →

Neville Edward Alexander meant many specific things to many different people. For the most part of his adult life, he grappled with life’s contradictions, its dilemmas, its twists and its beauty as a socialist intellectual and a revolutionary Marxist since his political baptism in the Non-European Unity Movement’s student wing, the Cape Peninsula Students’ Union. In the unfolding drama that captures his life’s work, Alexander eschewed the presumed impartiality of the scholar who pretends to stand “on the wall of a threatened city” and write about the oppressors and the oppressed. Like Antonio Gramsci, Amilcar Cabral, Che Guevara and Leon Trotsky, Alexander’s place has been “within the revolution’s threatened city”. His political and academic choices were ideologically inspired and his writings were crafted unambiguously to promote the interests of working people and their allies. Continue lendo →

The Occupy Movement, the first such broad, national, multi-issue, mass movement in forty years, represented a test for the revolutionary socialist left in several senses. First, would the left recognize its important and immediately move to become an active part of it and work within it to help provide leadership? Second, would the left during Occupy be able to both appreciate its strengths and develop a critique of its weaknesses and limitations? Would it as the same time be able to conduct socialist propaganda and recruit to the socialist movement? Third, would the left in retrospect be able to analyze and learn from the Occupy experience in order to prepare itself for future movements?

The following document is seen as part of the process of understanding and analyzing Occupy and what proved to be the most important development of the Occupy movement–its interaction with the labor unions. This interaction represented the greatest challenge to the movement and to those of us who seek to understand it and learn from it. Continue lendo →

Following the elections in Greece on the 6th of May the Bureau of the Fourth International published a statement “The future of the workers of Europe is being decided in Greece” available here. OKDE-Spartakos, the Greek section of the Fourth International wrote to give their opinion on this statement. Their letter and a reply by the Bureau are published below. Continue lendo →

The final opinion polls before the June 17 parliamentary elections in Greece report that SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left) has the support of between 25 and 31.5% of voters, up from the 16.7% it won in the May 2012 elections, when it stunned many people by leaping to second place among Greece’s many political contenders [1]. It’s possible that SYRIZA could come first this time.

SYRIZA is an alliance of left groups. By far the largest of these is the Coalition of Left Movements and Ecology (Synaspismos or SYN). The majority of SYN supports a politics of anti-neoliberal reforms within the eurozone but there is a strong Left Current within SYN that favours leaving the eurozone. There are also other groups in SYRIZA that are more radical or revolutionary socialist. Continue lendo →

The political situation in Greece has to be resolved either by the working class or by the forces of reaction. Syriza has come under fire, since its stunning election result in May where it went from 4.4% to 16.8% of the popular vote. This week major comment pieces have appeared in the two main left papers in Britain, the Morning Star and the Socialist Worker, written by Kenny Coyle and Alex Callinicos respectively. Rather than calling for critical support for Syriza in opposing the memorandum and defending the working class, both articles argue that the working class have chosen the wrong party to support.

Andrew Burgin and Kate Hudson, Socialist Unity, May 30, 2012

Greece stands on a precipice. There can be no return to the old politics there and a revolutionary situation is emerging amid the chaos of everyday life. The classic conditions for revolution are present: a working class no longer prepared to live in the old way and a ruling class no longer able to rule in the old way. Continue lendo →

It is generally true that there is some delay between the real, active class struggle and elections. However, the recent elections in Greece show a picture from the future: a forthcoming frontal collision of two socio-political camps. The left and the far right. This is not only about the rise of the Golden Dawn neonazi party, but also about the “non-economical” part of the Independent Greeks’ program (a split from New Democracy that states it is against the memorandum and accepts the economic program of SYRIZA) as well as the rightward turn of New Democracy (ND, the Christian-Democrats). For working people, the period to come can be summarized by the formula: great opportunities, great dangers.

In this confrontation, the left has now a political lead due to the rise of SYRIZA, but also to the weight of the Communist Party, that despite its inability to profit from the biggest leftward dynamics of the last 30 years, remains a party with remarkable influence in the working class and, what’s more important, with a large organized membership. Without this membership it would have suffered even more from the trend towards SYRIZA. However the left’s lead, even if historically amazing, is very fragile. The electoral rise of SYRIZA is out of proportion to the mediocre rise of its membership. It principally reflects a collective mood for diminishing the traditional dominance of the two parties (ND and PASOK). This phenomenon is not qualitatively different from the takeoff of the Democratic Left (DIMAR) of Kouvelis in the polls in February. It is, in brief, a surprise. Continue lendo →